91自拍 now has a virtual presence in Minecraft: Education Edition. The Great Tech Story is a new 鈥渨orld鈥� in the popular game platform that鈥檚 designed to help teachers prepare students to become knowledgeable and ethical users and builders of technology. In partnership with veteran world builders , 91自拍 curators and museum educators mined the collection for fun objects and diverse and interesting people to populate the game world.
It鈥檚 fair to say that neither the 91自拍 team nor the game development team fully understood what it would take to make this brave new world.
Although some of us have experience creating curriculum and interactive activities for students at the Museum, no one on the 91自拍 team had ever developed a game before.
As we let our imaginations roam鈥攐ften wildly and unproductively鈥攖he ReWrite team鈥檚 patience, positive attitude, and can-do spirit never wavered. Even when we asked for the seemingly impossible, they came up with ingenious solutions, creatively working to realize our vision in Minecraft鈥檚 blocky, pixelated environment.
The 91自拍 lobby in the Minecraft game.
Slow, clumsy users ourselves, we were awed by the speed with which our partners zipped around the world, often building new features in real-time during meetings. Working with new people who shared our vision of 91自拍 as a great place for learning and fun was Senior Curator Dag Spicer鈥檚 favorite part of the project.
Though we all love technology, I was struck by the different work cultures of a museum and a game development company. They move fast and try things out to see if they work. We move more slowly, trying to imagine the future implications of decisions before we make them. But we discovered we鈥檙e equally obsessed with detail.
An example of the developers鈥� notes on some changes made to the game.
Kate McGregor, director of education at 91自拍 and the team lead for the game, noticed that there were posters of skulls on the walls of the virtual Museum. When she asked about it, the developers laughed. It鈥檚 a poster they put in all their Minecraft worlds and without thinking they鈥檇 added it to 91自拍. They replaced it with more appropriate artwork, like the ones below.
Art on the walls in the exhibit showing AR/VR goggles and an early website for the White House.
As a content developer and writer, the 256-character limit for panels in the game was particularly challenging for me. We had to work hard to distill big ideas and lots of information into text that would engage student players. It was an interesting exercise, particularly for the curators on the team, who could (and have) written whole articles and books about what we were trying to share.
ReWrite designer Ryan Meuer worked on recreating the physical building using reference photos. For him, designing the game layout in a way that both resembled the layout of the real 91自拍 exhibit, Revolution: 2000 Years of Computing鈥攏otorious for its complexity鈥攁nd making it easy to navigate was a challenge. It鈥檚 unique in Minecraft to have something detailed and true-to-life that鈥檚 so close to scale, he said, and he enjoyed learning about and seeing each artifact come to life.
A section of the exhibit in the game showing a magnetic disk storage device and an Incan quipu, an ancient device for storing data with knots and thread.
The 91自拍 team had to determine which artifacts from the thousands on display and in our collection to use that would help us share lessons and be fun for students to learn about. Oh, and that could also be recreated in Minecraft.
Those artifacts include the 2000-year-old Antikythera mechanism鈥攖he oldest known scientific calculator鈥攖he Apollo lunar lander, handheld precursors of the smartphone, and a self-driving car. 91自拍鈥檚 Kate McGregor was excited to see her favorite artifact, Shakey the Robot, brought to life in digital form to reach a larger audience.
Shakey the robot in the Minecraft 91自拍 exhibit.
Kip Spangler, a ReWrite artist and designer, was intrigued about how things like the IBM 1401 changed and innovated computation and showed him how far computers have come today. The Cray-1 Supercomputer, which featured a central column surrounded by a padded, circular seat, was a hit with the game developers. ReWrite Mechanic Christopher Childress鈥� said, 鈥淚t鈥檚 a shame computers don鈥檛 come with their own upholstery anymore.鈥� For ReWrite Project Manager Allison Bondoc, the Cray-1 is the number one artifact she wants to visit in the real Museum.
The Cray-1 computer in the Minecraft 91自拍 exhibit.
As students navigate the exhibit, they meet 鈥渘on-player characters (NPCs)鈥� who share information about the artifacts and concepts they鈥檙e encountering. NPCs include historic figures and still-living computing pioneers as well as a diverse group of tech users and innovators. With accessibility a deep concern for both teams, 91自拍 consulted with disability experts and the developers created a Minecraft NPC using a power wheelchair with voice command tech.
This NPC, a high school student named Antonio, appears in an immersive learning experience where a family demonstrates how they use technology in daily life.
鈥淭he sheer number of interactable NPCs with unique dialogue is certainly higher than any previous projects I鈥檝e worked on,鈥� noted Christopher Childress.
The 91自拍 team chose familiar NPCs like Alan Turing and Admiral Grace Hopper as well as lesser-known figures like Elizabeth 鈥淛ake鈥� Feinler, who played a key role in the early internet, and Claude Shannon, who appears in a tuxedo to convey period clothing from the 19th century.
Claude Shannon stands beside a demo about relays in the Hardware Garage.
鈥淪ince the visual palette is so simple (8-bit blocky appearance),鈥� said 91自拍鈥檚 Dag Spicer, 鈥淚 enjoyed the back and forth between curators and developers with how to distill an historical character鈥檚 essence for the game within these limitations.鈥� His favorite character is Margaret Hamilton, who created software for the Apollo mission that landed men on the moon.
NPC Margaret Hamilton stands beneath the Apollo lunar lander.
For Kip Spangler, Ada Lovelace was the favorite. 鈥淏efore getting to work on the 91自拍 Minecraft World, I hadn鈥檛 gotten the pleasure of learning about her,鈥� he said.
Students meet additional NPCs and learn more in-depth concepts when they鈥檙e teleported from the exhibit to five immersive learning experiences. They鈥檙e introduced to the basics of computing technologies, programming concepts, the entrepreneur鈥檚 journey, ethics in tech, and the impact of tech on daily life.
An early diagram for the activities in the Hardware Garage immersive experience.
The game developers were instrumental in repurposing Minecraft鈥檚 medieval-esque tools and features into activities that teach technological concepts. For example, to learn how punched cards can tell computers what to do, students use a pickaxe to smash squares in a giant card. When they succeed in 鈥減unching鈥� the hole, a related 鈥渇urnace鈥� lights up.
Punched card activity in the immersive Software Lab experience.
I鈥檓 terrible at wielding the pickaxe, but the game developers assured me it鈥檚 a basic skill for anyone who plays Minecraft and the students will have no trouble using it, or any of the other tools they鈥檒l need to tackle the game鈥檚 culminating 鈥渂uild challenge.鈥�
Though humbling, I鈥檓 reminded that we all have something to teach each other: curators and educators, game developers and coders, and, most importantly, who we鈥檙e doing it all for鈥攖he kids who鈥檒l become the next generation of technology innovators.